He did not live to give his Rectorial address, but Mrs. Fawcett sent a copy of his Hackney speech to each of the students, saying as preface, ‘This last speech appears to me so characteristic of him on whom the choice of the students fell, so free from party passion and prejudice, so scrupulously just to opponents, so fearless in saying what he knew would not be popular, so instinct with devotion to principle and love of justice, that I cannot believe it will be useless or unacceptable to young men just beginning the battle of life.’ His friends had been over sanguine in their belief in Fawcett’s restored strength. He did not take a proper vacation in the summer of 1884, but devoted himself to settling questions which he found anxious and onerous about telephone rights. The work told on his weakened constitution. In September he went to Wales, ‘made a vigorous little speech,’ and visited two friends. He returned for his lectures at Cambridge, but he was forced to be much in London. Even so he snatched every occasion for fresh air and exercise that he could. He gloried in the great out-of-doors. [Sidenote: Bells.] One Sunday he went rowing with a friend on the Thames. It was a glorious day, and Fawcett was delighted with the church bells. They paused to listen, and he exclaimed, ‘How lovely the bells are!’ and then added wickedly, ‘and how glad I am that I am not in church.’ About him there always hovered a glint of the impish schoolboy playing ‘hookey,’ especially when he was in the open air, revelling in the warmth of the sunshine, listening to the lap and swish of the water, the rustle of the leaves, the wind in the grass, or the songs of the birds. He loved all these glad noises, and at such times his whole being gave out joy, his gay spirit had the freshness and the unhesitating truthfulness of early youth. He was so full of the light of that inner eye which nothing could darken, that he forgot his blindness in the fulness of his own bright soul. Heartily would he have assented to the sentiment: ‘It is a comely fashion to be glad—Joy is the grace we say to God.’ It surprised and startled those about him, whom he made so oblivious of his misfortune, when he would ask, ‘Is the sun shining?’ [Sidenote: Golden Leaves of Autumn.] Hearing that the foliage at Clarendon was singularly lovely that autumn, the tired, busy, blind man snatched a moment to run down to see the woods. The glory of that autumn light on the trees at Salisbury, when he was last permitted to see them, was never to be forgotten. He refused to remember the catastrophe which had blinded him, and still delighted to recall the beauty thus lost, and to love all similar autumn glories. * * * * * [Sidenote: His Last Speech.]